Even Magic Couldn't Cope With Traitors

Ed Moore

If I feel betrayed by Magic Johnson's turning traitor to his cause on Monday, I can't imagine how betrayed Magic must have felt by his peers to have been forced into this decision.

Johnson retired yet again Monday, citing the fear of his presence by NBA stars, whose previously unspoken concerns had in one weekend transformed into a calamitous roar.

Johnson tersely said goodbye in a press release no longer than an NBA box score, then spent the day in hiding. Within hours of Friday's start of the NBA season and after an entire Olympics and NBA exhibition season were successfully completed, Magic Johnson became Typhoid Mary and the Black Plague rolled into one ominous full-court fast break.

Magic's peers, suddenly afraid of him after supporting him for so long, cried for help, and when they did, Magic couldn't face the world after all.

Not the players if they feared contamination, not the fans if they feared the game itself had become compromised, not certainly the press for all the noise it was going to make in the name of weird science and titillating headlines.

It's easy to place blame for this mess, yet it's equally hard to make sense of any of it. AIDS is too scary for people not to be scared. And no matter what you say about it, someone will tell you that you are wrong.

So within days before the opening tipoff, as if facing a hangman's noose with all appeals denied, Magic's peers began verbalizing their fears. Karl Malone of the Utah Jazz indicated Magic's HIV-positive body could change the outcome of games. Malone said if he had a cut on his own body, let alone any cut on Magic's, and Magic came driving down the lane with the game on the line, beefy Karl just might move out of the way.

That fear hit Magic like a betting scandal. The fix was in, in a matter of speaking. For the outcome of games to be changed due to his health was more than Magic's win-at-all-costs warrior nature could stand to hear.

So the experiment - and let's face it, Magic's comeback was being used as an experiment by AIDS activists even if not by himself - ended before it ever really began.

This surprise retirement after so much good had been made of his return was caused by ``mean-spirited comments and fears from other players and sets us back a lot,'' Dr. David Rogers, co-chairman of the National AIDS Commission, told the Associated Press. ``Thousands of HIV-infected athletes have participated in probably millions of athletic contests, and there is not one documented case of HIV infection transmitted in this setting.''

Rogers may be a medical expert, but he is wrong about one thing. The comments were not mean-spirited. These were Magic's buddies. And in Malone and the Atlanta Hawks' Dominique Wilkins, voices of concern and fear and perception were coming from among the most dominant players in the sport, people Magic could hardly ignore.

If there was indeed a chance that Magic Johnson could give AIDS to a basketball player guarding him on the break, then he of course should never have been allowed to play. The fact doctors say it can't be done gave Magic adequate mental relief and mental stability, but finally his peers couldn't relax when provided the same information.

That stunned him. And now it stuns the NBA.

Magic was strong. Now he is afraid. He stepped aside in large part to protect himself, but also to protect the integrity of the game and to protect his friends on the court from their own prejudice.

Fear of AIDS strikes out in the NBA, and Magic is sent running for cover.

If his mind could have handled the pressure he should have stood firm. Magic should be playing Friday.